Arachis inflata: A New B Genome species of Arachis (Fabaceae)

Margoth Atahuachi,Guillermo J. Seijo,Antonio Krapovickas †,Charles E. Simpson

doi:10.30972/bon.3024942

Abstract

Great efforts have been done to collect germplasm of the Arachis genus in South America, however, many regions still remain underexplored. Under the hypothesis that these regions have new and diverse populations/species of Arachis, several expeditions were carried out since 2000 in Bolivia, to increase the documentation of the genus diversity. As a first result of these explorations, a new species of section Arachis with B genome is formally described. Arachis inflata is closely related to A. magna and A. ipaënsis, but it can be clearly distinguished from them, and from any other species of the genus, for having a type of fruit with a completely distinct morphology. The fruit has a smooth epicarp, but shows a bullated aspect, due to the presence of air chambers in the mesocarp.

Highlights

Section Arachis is the largest and more diverse taxonomic section of the homonymous genus (Krapovickas et Gregory 1994; Valls et Simpson 2005)
Arachis inflata is closely related to A. magna and A. ipaënsis, but it can be clearly distinguished from them, and from any other species of the genus, for having a type of fruit with a completely distinct morphology
Even though several exploration missions for wild Arachis species were done in Bolivia, most of them concentrated in the 70 ́s - 80 ́s and early 90’s (Valls et al, 1995), logistic difficulties for travelling by land and the enormous effort that required the expeditions at that time resulted in a sparse picture of many of the collection points

Summary

Introduction

Section Arachis is the largest and more diverse taxonomic section of the homonymous genus (Krapovickas et Gregory 1994; Valls et Simpson 2005). Under the hypothesis that these regions have new and diverse populations/species of Arachis, several expeditions were carried out since 2000 in Bolivia, to increase the documentation of the genus diversity. As a first result of these explorations, a new species of section Arachis with B genome is formally described.

Results

Conclusion